Sébastien-Roch Nicolas Quotes
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Love is like epidemic diseases. The more one fears it the more likely one is to contract it.
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Society would be a charming affair if we were only interested in one another.
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One must not hope to be more than one can be.
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Were a man to consult only his reason, who would marry? For myself, I wouldn't marry, for fear of having a son who resembled me.
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The philosopher who would fain extinguish his passions resembles the chemist who would like to let his furnace go out.
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Whoever is not a misanthrope at forty can never have loved mankind.
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It is inconceivable how much wit it requires to avoid being ridiculous.
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We leave unmolested those who set the fire to the house, and prosecute those who sound the alarm.
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There is no history worthy attention save that of free nations; the history of nations under the sway of despotism is no more than a collection of anecdotes.
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It is with happiness as with watches: the less complicated, the less easily deranged.
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Most of those who make collections of verse or epigram are like men eating cherries or oysters: they choose out the best at first, and end by eating all.
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Most books today seemed to have been written overnight from books read the day before.
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At the sight of what goes on in the world, the most misanthropic of men must end by being amused, and Heraclitus must die laughing.
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In love, everything is true, everything is false; it is the one subject on which one cannot express an absurdity.
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Scandal is an importunate wasp, against which we must make no movement unless we are quite sure that we can kill it; otherwise it will return to the attack more furious than ever.
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Nearly all men are slaves for the same reason that the Spartans assigned for the servitude of the Persians -- lack of power to pronounce the syllable, "No." To be able to utter that word and live alone, are the only means to preserve one's freedom and one's character.
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False modesty is the most decent of all lies.
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Life is a malady in which sleep soothes us every sixteen hours; it is a palliation; death is the remedy.
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Women bestow on friendship only what they borrow from love.
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Whatever evil a man may think of women, there is no woman but thinks more.
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Society is composed of two great classes, those that have more dinners than appetite, and those who have more appetite than dinners.
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Wicked people sometimes perform good actions. I suppose they wish to see if this gives as great a feeling of pleasure as the virtuous claim for it.
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The person is always happy who is in the presence of something they cannot know in full. A person as advanced far in the study of morals who has mastered the difference between pride and vanity.
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Running a house should be left to innkeepers.